'I just want to them realise': Portsmouth boss' powerful message to players after 'emotional' inquest
Following his Deepdale eruption, John Mousinho’s mood has now regained its natural equilibrium - albeit after delivering more blunt home truths to his players.
And the head coach is hoping the strongly-delivered message has finally ‘sunk in’ as he strives to drag Pompey over the Championship finishing line.
Mousinho was furious in the aftermath of the late defeat at Preston. By his own admission, maybe the angriest he’s been as Blues boss.
Barely seven days after victory over Leeds had created a 10-point gap between the drop zone, successive defeats had reduced that precious advantage to four points.
The subsequent international break has provided additional time to address those alarming Preston issues, including working through solutions on the training pitch.
As ever, he will discover whether that has been successful when Pompey return to action, in this case Blackburn’s visit to Fratton Park on Saturday.
Mousinho told The News: ‘Was it my most angry? Maybe. We worked so hard to get back into the game and equalised, then to throw it away in the manner which we did was the most frustrating thing for me.
‘We took them through the Preston post-match when everybody came back into the building last week and the message was really clear.
‘We had done excellently for 85 of the 90 minutes. Then, when we equalised, we did some really, really strange things. We have now shown the lads exactly what we expect of them and have worked on a few of those bits this week.
‘Going through it, I was slightly less emotional, which is the benefit you get when you give it a couple of days, but I felt the same way. The message was still the same to the players, but probably with a bit more detail and a bit more clarity.
‘I hope it has sunk in, we’ll see against Blackburn. There are always going to be times when the opposition has the ball and has chances, sometimes they score goals, that’s fine. It’s just making sure we concede in the right way and we don’t concede things which we shouldn’t do.
‘At times when we dominated the game in the first half against Preston, it felt we still didn’t have that belief, that cutting edge and killer instinct to go and put sides away. We allowed them to get to half-time to make those four changes and change the course of the game.
‘We are still a bit tentative and a bit hesitant in certain moments. I just want the lads to realise that we’ve played every side in the league, almost twice, so my question to the players was do you think you are out of place at this level?
‘I don’t think we are at all. The players can compete and put up a decent-enough fight, even against the top boys.’
‘More belief and a bit more quality’
Blackburn have lost four of their last five matches, taking just a point during that period as they adjust to life without John Eustace.
Valerien Ismael has taken over since his predecessor walked out to join Derby, yet recently suffered losses to three of Pompey’s relegation rivals in the Rams, Stoke and Cardiff.
How the Fratton faithful will be hoping to inflict more misery on the new Ewood Park manager on Saturday.
Mousinho added: ‘When we’re playing sides we need to at least come away with a point or sometimes beat, I want us to have a bit more belief and a bit more quality in those small moments. The detail in those small moments have, at some stages of the season, made us unstuck.
‘We’ve had some away games where we’ve been blown away and that’s what it is, you can almost live with those games because you’re just not in the game and sides are better than you.
‘But there have been too many times this year where it has been close and we have slipped up or we’ve switched off for a second or haven’t done the right thing late in the game. That’s what we really need to get better at.’
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